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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Pearson 'Education' -- Who Are These People?

Very important read.

"Pearson, a British multi-national conglomerate, is one of the largest private businesses maneuvering for U.S. education dollars. The company had net earnings of 956 million pounds or approximately 1.5 billion dollars in 2011."

Read on.

Angela

Pearson 'Education' -- Who Are These People?

Social studies educator, Hofstra University

According to a recent article
on Reuters, an international news service based in Great Britain,
"investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in
public education. The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S.
spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five
through 18. The entire education sector, including college and
mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic
product, more than the energy or technology sectors."Pearson,
a British multi-national conglomerate, is one of the largest private
businesses maneuvering for U.S. education dollars. The company had net
earnings of 956 million pounds or approximately 1.5 billion dollars in
2011.
Starting in May 2014, Pearson Education will take over
teacher certification in New York State as a way of fulfilling the
state's promised "reforms" in its application for federal Race to the
Top money. The evaluation system known as the Teacher Performance assessment or TPA was developed
at Stanford University with support from Pearson, but it will be solely
administered and prospective teachers will be entirely evaluated by
Pearson and its agents. Pearson is adverting
for current or retired licensed teachers or administrators willing to
evaluate applicants for teacher certification. It is prepared to pay $75 per assessment.
The Pearson footprint appears to be everywhere and taints academic research as well as government policy. For example, the Education Development Center
(EDC), based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a "global nonprofit
organization that designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to
address some of the world's most urgent challenges in education,
health, and economic opportunity." EDC works with
"public-sector and private partners" to "harness the power of people
and systems to improve education, health promotion and care, workforce
preparation, communications technologies, and civic engagement." In
education, it is involved in curriculum and materials development,
research and evaluation, publication and distribution, online learning,
professional development, and public policy development. According to
its website, its funders
include Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel, the Gates Foundation, and of course,
Pearson Education, all companies or groups that stand to benefit from
its policy recommendations.
EDC sponsored a study
on the effectiveness of new teacher evaluation systems, "An examination
of performance-based teacher evaluation systems in five states," that
Pearson is promoting but there are two VERY BIG FLAWS in the study.
First, of the five states included in the study, Delaware, Georgia,
Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas, four, Georgia, Tennessee, North
Carolina, and Texas, are notorious anti-union states where teachers have
virtually no job security or union protection, and Delaware used the
imposition of new teacher assessments to make it more difficult for
teachers to acquire tenure. In Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia
collective bargaining by teachers is illegal. Tennessee, Texas and North
Carolina used the new assessments to make it easier to fire teachers
and Georgia used the assessments to determine teacher pay. The second
flaw is that the study draws no connection between the evaluation system
and improved student learning. According to the Financial Times
of London, a Pearson owned property, in what I consider a
conflict-of-interests, Susan Fuhrman, the President of Teachers College
at Columbia University has been a "Non-Executive Independent Director of
Pearson PLC" since 2004 and a major stockholder
in the company with over 13,000 shares worth according to my estimate
over two hundred thousand dollars. Fuhrman also is "president of the
National Academy of Education, and was previously dean of the Graduate
School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and on the board
of trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching."
In official Pearson PLC reports
available online, Susan Fuhrman, President of Teachers College-Columbia
University is listed as a non-executive director of Pearson. As of
February 29, 2012, she held
12,927 shares of Pearson stock valued at $240,000. As a non-executive
director she also receives an annual fee of 65,000 or almost $100,000.
Fuhrman has been a non-executive director since 2004 and has received
fees and stock I estimate worth more than a million dollars, certainly a
substantial sum, but not the $20 million I initially reported.
There has been some resistance to Pearson's influence over American education.
In May 2012, students and teachers in the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus School of Education launched
a national campaign challenging the forced implementation of Teacher
Performance Assessment. They argued that the field supervisors and
cooperating teachers who guided their teaching practice and observed and
evaluated them for six months in middle and high school classrooms were
better equipped to judge their teaching skills and potential than
people who had never seen nor spoken with them. They have refused to
participate in a pilot program organized by Pearson and to submit the
two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching and a take-home test. They
are supported by United Opt Out National,
a website that organized a campaign and petition drive to boycott
Pearson evaluations of students, student teachers, and teachers. In June
2012, New York parents protested against Pearson designed reading tests that included stand reading passages and meaningless choices.
The question that must addressed is whether the British publishing
giant Pearson and its Pearson Education subsidy should determine who is
qualified to teach and what should be taught in New York State and the
United States? I don't think so! Not only did no one elect them, but
when people learn who they are, they might not want them anywhere near a
school -- or a government official.
From what I can make out from its website, the three key players at Pearson and Pearson Education are Glen Moreno, chairman of the Pearson Board of Directors,
Dame Marjorie Morris Scardino, overall chief executive for Pearson, and
William Ethridge, chief executive for North American Education.
Although the largest stockholders
are a British investment firm called Legal & General Group PLC
which controls 32 million shares or 4% of the company and the Libyan
Investment Authority with 24 million shares or 3% of the company.
According to the Financial Times of London, the Libyan Investment Authority was founded by Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam, his heir apparent until the regime's collapse, in January 2007. Glen Moreno
is wealthy, powerful, influential, and I believe highly suspect.
According to Wikipedia, Moreno was born in California in 1943 and has a
law degree from Harvard University. He worked
for 18 years at Citigroup in Europe and Asia, running the investment
banking and trading divisions. Moreno was a director of the politically
influential Fidelity International Ltd. According to U.K. Electoral
Commission records,
"since 1994, Fidelity Investment Management, part of Fidelity
International, has donated £495,500 to the party. Mr Moreno is a former
chief executive of Fidelity's international arm." He became chairman of
Pearson, the publisher of the British newspaper Financial Times in October 2005.
Moreno was chairman of UK Financial Investments, the group set up by
the British government to protect public funds used to bail-out banks
after the 2008 global economic collapse. He was forced to resign
in 2009 when it was revealed that he was a trustee of Liechtenstein
Global Trust (LGT), a private bank accused of aiding tax evasion.
Moreno was also deputy chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, Great Britain's largest mortgage lender, but stepped down there in May 2012.
Among the Pearson troika, Moreno is the lowest paid,
although he apparently has other resources. According to Forbes, his
total compensation in 2011 was a little over $600,000. He does however
own a home in London and a cattle farm in Virginia and according to the Times of London, managed to purchase 200,000 shares of Lloyd stock in 2010.
Dame Marjorie
was also originally an American but became a British citizen. She has
been CEO of Pearson since 1997. Before becoming CEO of Pearson she was a
lawyer in Georgia and a newspaper publisher. In 2007, Forbes
magazine placed her seventeenth on its list of the 100 most powerful
women in the world. She was named a "Dame of the British Empire" in
2010. According to Forbes, her total compensation
in 2011 was $2,455,000. But that represents a tiny fraction of her
compensation that includes stock options. Scardino holds 1.5 million
shares of Pearson stock.William Ethridge became chief executive
of Pearson's North American Education division in 2008. He has what
Pearson considers educational experience because he previously worked
for Prentice Hall and Addison Wesley. At Pearson he has been head of its
Higher Education, International and Professional Publishing division
and chairman of CourseSmart, a Pearson sponsored consortium of
electronic textbook publishers. According to Forbes, his total compensation in 2011 was $1,390,000. He holds a half million shares of Pearson stock.
According to ILSE or London South East, which reports British stock
market transactions, on July 30 and 31 2012, Dame Marjorie and William
Ethridge were involved in Pearson stock transfers
and sales on the London exchanges. If I read the ILSE report correctly,
the percentage of their holdings that Ethridge and Scardino sold seemed
to be a bit less than 4% of their total holdings. The sales brought
Ethridge approximately $323,500 in U.S. dollars. However a Pearson
regulatory announcement
issued on August 1, 2012, claims that share sales by Pearson directors
on those dates related to shares earned through Pearson's long-term
incentive plan (LTIP), whose rules "require that sufficient shares are
sold to discharge the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) income tax liability on the
shares released."
This was at a time when financial observers including the influential
Nomura Group were questioning whether Pearson stock was overvalued.
ILSE reported
that "Pearson had warned in April that its adjusted operating profit
would be down in the first half of 2012 . . . Sales at Penguin dropped
4%, with profits falling 48% to £22 million, which management said was
caused by lower sales in its more profitable U.S. market. Uncertainty
over potential national and local government spending cuts in the US
continues to cast a shadow over the group's Education business."
In other words, Pearson's chief operating officers, who are also
heavily invested in the company, are busy trading stocks and racking up
dollars and pounds while the corporation's financial situation is shaky.
And their solution is to sell, sell, sell their products in the United
States.
Are these the people we want designing tests, lessons, and curriculum
for our students and deciding who is qualified to become teachers?Correction:
London Stock Exchange prices
are quoted in pounds and pence. Unless indicated, the price of shares
is shown in pence. 100 pence equal 1 pound. I originally wrote "The
sales brought Ethridge alone 20,474,712 GBX or approximately 32,350,000
in U.S. dollars." However, GBX is in pence, so the U.S. dollar value of the transaction would only be $323,500.
In official Pearson PLC reports
available online, Susan Fuhrman, President of Teachers College-Columbia
University is listed as a non-executive director of Pearson. As of
February 29, 2012, she held 12,927 shares of Pearson stock valued at
$240,000. As a non-executive director she also receives an annual fee of
65,000 or almost $100,000. Fuhrman has been a non-executive director
since 2004 and has received fees and stock I estimate worth more than a
million dollars, certainly a substantial sum, but not the $20 million I
initially reported.
I thank "Nick50000" for bringing this to my attention.